


My Life a Mirror

by merryghoul



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Antarctica, Echoes of Clara Oswin Oswald, F/F, Future, Nudity, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-10 18:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6999835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/pseuds/merryghoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara forgot, then remembered, her splinters.  It didn't make sense to her until she met Ashildr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Life a Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [failsafe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/gifts).



> Title inspired by [this Ernest Holmes quote.](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/ernestholm172213.html?src=t_mirror)

Clara didn't want to acknowledge her splinters. She thought all of them were born to save the Doctor and all of them died doing so. Remembering Clara Oswin Oswald falling off a cloud after meeting the Doctor in Victorian England was bad enough. The dream she had of Oswin Oswald being converted into a Dalek was the last straw. Clara willed herself to forget about the splinters. Thinking and dreaming about them was too traumatic for her to handle. 

Clara could've kept on ignoring the existence of her splinters. But Clara decided to travel with the Doctor again. It was only a matter of time before Clara was forced to deal with the existence of her splinters. Clara would meet one of her splinters in an Antarctica that was in Clara's future to help that splinter battle a crazed scientist turning humans into mutated creatures.

The splinter Clara met was named Oswin Clarence, or "Winnie" for short. She was a research student. Meeting Winnie terrified Clara. She was convinced Winnie would save the Doctor and then die afterward. Winnie fell into temperatures that should've killed her. Her roommate Marianne, who had been changed into a purple walrus-like humanoid, pulled her out of the ice. 

After Winnie survived, Clara allowed herself to think and dream about her splinters. There were the unpleasant moments where the splinters did die to save the life of the Doctor. It was even more painful when she realized the Doctor never noticed the splinters' sacrifices for the Doctor. But several of them lived their own lives after encountering the Doctor, and several of them lived to old age. 

Marianne's face would haunt Clara in her dreams and her faint memories of the splinters. Clara remembered Marianne's inhuman purple face, and it flickered in and out of her dreams every once in a while. But before Clara met the mutated Marianne, she saw a picture of a human Marianne in the room Winnie and Marianne once shared. Winnie and Marianne were photographed by someone holding penguin chicks in their hands. Not all the splinters lived lives with women who looked like Marianne. But some of them did. 

Clara dreamed of what happened after Marianne saved Winnie. She saw Marianne in a laboratory looking down at her now-human body. Marianne was naked. She was trying to cover her private parts in vain with her arms. 

"Do you need a lab coat?" Winnie asked Marianne.

Marianne nodded. Winnie gave Marianne the lab coat. Marianne put it on as fast as she could. The two of them laughed, grinning at each other. 

"So...when are we going home?" Winnie said.

The laughter stopped. The two looked at each other, smiling. That was where that dream ended. 

In another dream, Clara saw Oswin again. This time it wasn't to see her converted into a Dalek, meeting the Doctor, or being smashed by debris in the Dalek Asylum. Oswin was human, and she was in some apartment several thousands of years in the future. Oswin was facing another woman, a woman who looked a lot like Marianne. 

"Please don't leave me," the woman who looked like Marianne said. She was crying. 

"I've got to go, Nina," Oswin said to Nina. "The _Alaska's_ going to leave me behind if I stay with you."

"I don't know if you're coming back."

Oswin put her right hand on Nina's left shoulder. "I promise I'll come back for you," Nina said. 

After that moment Clara's dream of Oswin and Nina ended. 

Clara could recall she had dreams of a woman that looked like Marianne and Nina, but she didn't pay too much attention to them. Then Clara met Ashildr. Clara was drawn to Ashildr, but she couldn't explain why. Clara didn't notice it at first because she was more focused on helping Ashildr save her beloved village. Her attraction to Ashildr made more sense to her when she found the Doctor's surveillance room devoted to Ashildr in his TARDIS.

Ashildr was now far older than Clara. Ashildr renounced her birth name and was calling herself various names based on her birth name. Several of the renderings of Ashildr the Doctor found weren't drawn realistically, but Clara could make the connection. Marianne's face was similar to Ashildr's. Marianne had a few more piercings than the Ashildr Clara knew, but she'd know that face anywhere. Nina's face was also similar to Ashildr's. 

Clara concluded that Ashildr, in some way, was her companion. No wonder Clara wanted to fight the Doctor for Ashildr. 

There was one thing that puzzled Clara. Frightened, her, actually. All traces of Ashildr that the Doctor could find stopped sometime after the 1800s. How could Ashildr be Clara's companion if Ashildr was dead? 

Ironically, it took Clara's death to figure out how Ashildr, now calling herself Me, would be her companion. Well, that and how Marianne might've ended up with piercings.

 

Me missed writing in her diaries. When the matter of helping the Doctor find his TARDIS again was resolved, one of the first things she did with Clara in their TARDIS was to steal every diary she wrote in. Me stole diaries from her time as Lady Me, her time as Mayor Me, and other points in her life when she was able to keep a diary. By the time Me stole her diaries back from herself, Clara and Me's TARDIS had fashioned Me a library to hold all of her diaries. It was in that very library that Clara found Me after they had chased out Sontarans expecting to be served inside their TARDIS. 

Clara approached Me as she was writing in a diary. "Can I sit beside you?" 

Me looked up at Clara and smiled. "Of course. When don't I mind you being here with me?"

"Did I ever tell you about my splinters?"

"Splinters?" Me put down her pen and propped her chin on her right hand. "I know you don't mean wooden splinters."

"Why would I even have wooden splinters?"

Clara told Me about how she jumped in the Doctor's timeline, and, as a result, ended up being splintered as different women who looked like her in time and space. She also mentioned her theory that whatever happened to her when she was alive was mirrored in the lives of the other splinters. Then she mentioned the dreams she had of some of the splinters that looked like Me, like Marianne and Nina. 

"Do you know what this means?" Me asked Clara.

"You tell me."

"When you jumped into the Doctor's timeline to save him, you didn't just get splintered into time and space. Your timeline was also splintered. Everything you ever did, everything you experienced, it was mirrored by your splinters. That's why some of them want to make bad souffles and others of them encountered Daleks."

Clara gave Me an eyebrow. "What are you saying about my souffles?"

Me shook her head. "They're not bad. But certainly we could use a different recipe. I could even help you when you make them."

"You're saying they're bad."

"Okay, they're bad. But that's not my point here. Because you met me while you were alive, your splinters mirrored different versions of me into the universe. And here I thought I lost my children decades ago. There's a bit of me alive in the universe somewhere, all because I met you in your timeline. I'd call that destiny."

"The Doctor doesn't believe in destiny." 

"The Doctor doesn't want to admit this, but sometimes he's wrong, Clara."

"I know." Clara held Me's right hand. "At least I'm here with the original you."

"And I'm here with the original you." 

Clara leaned in for a kiss. Me followed her. It still freaked Me out that her love had no pulse. Aside from speaking, she couldn't hear her love breathing. But Me would gladly take someone who noticed her for the rest of her life than to fall in love with someone destined to grow old and die, someone who would mistake her for a ghost instead of someone living. 

"I should write that in my diary," Me said. "You may between heartbeats, but I don't trust us to remember your discovery."

Clara nodded. "You should. I'm going to go back in the control room and see how far we are to the next place we're going to."

Clara walked away, but she stopped at the doorway that lead to Me's library.

"Clara?"

Clara stopped. "Yes?"

"Do you ever think we're going to meet some of our splinters?" 

"Don't know. Maybe we'll meet them soon." 

 

Clara and Me's TARDIS arrived in Atlantis. It wasn't the Atlantis of myth—spaceships flew in and out of the city, and advancements Clara and Me never saw before could be found on every street and every shop. 

There was a knock on their TARDIS door. Clara and Me were in the TARDIS console room. Me switched on a monitor to see who was outside. At the door were two women. Both of them looked like Clara and Me, but were dressed up in the clothing of the people of Atlantis. Me called Clara over to the monitor. 

"Should we invite them in?" Me said.

Clara and Me looked at each other. Clara grinned. "Do you have to ask?"


End file.
